A Year in the Merde

by Stephen Clarke

  You've just made yourself a soothing cup of tea when Madame returns and gets her team of trained hippos to clean up the mess, clomping their hooves, or whatever hippos have, in time to the nasal howl of some terminally lovesick French crooner. I once dared to go up and ask whether the hippos really needed to wear high heels indoors all the time, and a snooty woman in pearls slammed the door in my face.

  It wouldn't have been so bad, but the kids had school on Saturdays, too. So, to avoid letting your thoughts dwell too much on arson or axe attacks, you start looking for a weekend maison.

  I wondered if this wasn't what made Parisians so manic. Indoors, they are permanently assaulted by the unwelcome sounds of their neighbours' routine lives. And then when they get outdoors, the only place to walk is on hard tarmac. The constant pounding on their eardrums and their feet must cause their brains to bounce off-centre.

  Don't get me wrong. I was glad to arrive back in Paris after Christmas. Just getting off the train and stepping into the rush for the metro, I felt reenergized. It's a city that pulls you along with it. I knew that I could now get served in cafés, barge my way to the front of queues, infuriate people just by shrugging. It was like being good at a particularly tough computer game.

  When I went into the office on the first Monday of the New Year, things seemed to be running normally. No heaps of cowdung in reception. No police officers opening our bags to check for illegal meat. Like everyone else, I now felt entirely comfortable spending the first morning kissing colleagues, drinking coffee and wondering where to go for my next holiday.

  A large part of the afternoon was taken up with a tea party in Jean-Marie's office in honour of "la galette". This was a seasonal ceremony centred on eating a sort of flat, round croissant stuffed with marzipan. Stéphanie cut the galette into slices, then Christine, as the youngest, had to get under the table and say who should get which slice. Once this was done, everyone tucked in gingerly, waiting to see who would break a tooth on the porcelain favour hidden in the pastry. It was Jean-Marie who eventually pulled a marzipan-smeared cow out of his mouth. I would have said it was a fix except that he was now forced to look stupid in a paper crown for the rest of the party.

  Beneath his veneer of New Year goodwill, Jean-Marie seemed tense, but by no means out of his mind with worry. His medal was still on the wall, so presumably the ministry inspector had just come over for a chat about mincer blades. And when I mentioned the idea of getting a house in the country, in Normandy maybe, Jean-Marie immediately offered to drive me out to "the most beautiful country town in France" the following weekend.

  Alexa didn't want to come - her dad had just come off Prozac and was feeling "fragilized" - so at nine on Saturday morning I met Jean-Marie in the company's underground garage, where he'd left his plush silver Renault to be washed, and we set off for the country.

  "There is no time to lose," he said as he sliced through the traffic, hooted pedestrians out of the way and swung out into the mad rush of the Champs-Elysées. "All Paris will be on the road."

  In fact, all Paris seemed to have gathered to drive around the Arc de Triomphe.

  It was easy to see why. The Arc is much more impressive in real life than on postcards, a towering 160-foot-high double building rather than a humble arch. Napoléon commissioned it to celebrate his victory over the Russians and the Austrians at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 (so my guidebook says, and I have no reason to disbelieve it), and today it stands majestically astride a small island in the middle of one of Europe's largest roundabouts, which is known as 1'Étoile, or the star. The roundabout has 12 exits and is a massive quarter of a mile in diameter, which gives cars plenty of room to dash in at least 12 different directions at once. As a star, 1'Étoile is part black hole, part supernova. Cars are sucked in, bounced crazily around, then expelled along one of the exits.

  Jean-Marie accelerated into the throng of vehicles, hardly blinking as his flash new car was almost cut in two by a kamikaze Kawasaki. He then hit the hooter as if this would stop us ploughing into the side of a tiny Smart car that had appeared from nowhere a foot from his speeding bonnet. He seemed to have forgotten that his car had brakes. He slewed on through four or five near misses, and I wondered how many seconds it would be before his apparently God-given luck ran out and I was chewing airbag.

  Though I must admit I was enjoying myself in a suicidal sort of way. I was in awe of the evasion tactics on display here, and getting an adrenalin buzz from the sheer nerve of these drivers who had to swerve directly in front of oncoming cars to make their exit, sometimes stopping dead in the traffic even though Jean-Marie's executive assault vehicle was charging at their flank.

  Insurance companies never investigate accidents at L'Étoile," Jean-Marie explained. "It would be like asking how a boxer broke his nose." He laughed and closed his eyes for at least three seconds.

  "Great," I said. I closed mine and waited for the inevitable.

  Miraculously, the inevitable proved to be evitable after all, and we escaped from the gravitational pull of the Étoile. Now Jean-Marie's madness was limited to talking on his mobile phone, zig-zagging from lane to lane to gain precious yards in the traffic, and speeding through red lights.

  "Red lights are like queues," he said scornfully; "They are for people who have time to waste."

  We came to a junction marked "north", and he turned west.

  "Isn't Normandy in the north?" I asked.

  "No, it's in the northwest," he said, turning again, southwest this time. "But we are not going towards the coast. It is too full of Parisians. They call it the 21st arrondissement. It is too expensive for you."

  So that was decided.

  We headed away from the sun at approximately double the legal speed limit. He was driving so fast that it seemed highly probable he would leave the sun behind and take us back into night. He wasn't the only one. We were in fourth or fifth place in a column of large cars charging along the autoroute at the same speed, using their combined power ten scare slower cars out of the fast lane. In fact it felt marginally safer this way, because you floated past the chaos happening on your right, where people were suddenly shooting out unannounced from behind trucks, overtaking on the inside, or driving just inches from the rear bumper of the car in front. It was easy to see why France has the worst accident statistics in Europe. One breath of fog, one drop of rain, and this behaviour becomes literally murderous.

  Today was dry but slightly frosty. A small patch of black ice would have sent us skidding all the way to the Atlantic, but Jean-Marie was willing to take the chance. As he propelled us towards the country, he kept his eyes riveted to the car in front, looking for the slightest sign of failing speed so that he'd be able to overtake. Meanwhile, he ranted on about the ungrateful farmers. The ministry had received a tip-off about him, it seemed, and he'd had to provide proof to the inspector that all his beef came from legal sources.

  "Which was no problem, of course."

  "Of course."

  And today he had to go and see someone "with influence over the farmers", he said, "and kiss their feet like a slave in front of the caïd".

  I didn't know exactly what a caïd was, but from Jean-Marie's expression, they probably didn't wash between their toes.

  We turned off the autoroute before Chartres and headed into a hilly, wooded area dotted with small farms and four-house hamlets.

  We emerged from the hills into a wide, sunlit plain, and Jean-Marie lowered his window to take in a deep lungful of chilly country air.

  "We are here," he said as we rolled into the central square of a quaintly crumbling country town called Trou-sur-Mayenne.

  It was market day. There were white vans parked higgledy-piggledy everywhere. People were wandering around with shopping bags that looked as if they were about to burst and cover the road with lettuce and crusty loaves. There were groups of old men in blue dungarees, caps on heads, chatting against the wall of the market hall through little fogs of cigarette smoke. They were
farmers, no doubt, getting updates about new subsidies for painting their pigs with the EU flag.

  The market hall was basically just a high, tiled roof on thick stone legs. The roof was held aloft by a criss-cross pattern of massive, roughly hewn beams and metal ceiling joists that had lost most of their paint. Inside, there were rows of stalls staffed by red-fingered people wearing several coats who were keeping themselves warm by barking at the milling shoppers to buy their share of the typical French opulence. There were stalls selling only potatoes and green vegetables, stalls selling only apples and pears, a busy butcher's van, another butcher's van with zero customers, and a blue-roofed fish stall with a huge decapitated tuna head attracting gawping children. I could also see a long rôtisserie of suckling pigs next to an enormous cauldron of sautéing potatoes - a snack bar for ogres.

  "Much more typical than Normandy," Jean-Marie told me. "But much cheaper houses. You go over there."

  He pointed across the market square to a stone house with a name that I couldn't read painted in gold above a small, curtained shop window.

  "It is a notary," Jean-Marie said. "His name is Lassay."

  "Lassay," I repeated, trying not to imagine a collie dog.

  "He is a lawyer but also sells houses. He is waiting for you."

  "You're not coming?"

  "No, I have business. He will drive you to the houses, and take you to Chartres, where you can get the train to Paris. Put your train ticket on expenses."

  Next minute I was out of the car and Jean-Marie had driven off into the market crowd. So much for helping me. He takes me where I don't want to go and dumps me. What if this Lassay fella had gone away for the weekend? Did they have taxis round these parts? Or would I have to hitch a ride on the back of a fish lorry?

  But Lassay was there, and he wasn't a very encouraging sight. He was warming his backside by a log fire in his small, overheated old shop. The only furniture in the low-ceilinged room was a heavy, leather-topped wooden desk, a modern swivel chair and two dark-red metal filing cabinets. A smoke-blackened photo of the market square in pre-car days hung above the marble fireplace as if Monsieur Lassay had jumped out of it into the here and now.

  He was like a Dickens character who had gone to a modern clothes shop and not quite understood what some of the garments were for. His badly knotted tie covered one side of his shirt collar, his trousers were baggy and bunched at the waist by a slim leather belt, and he was wearing a thick woollen jacket that looked as if it had been made from old doormats. His thinning white hair was long and straggly, brushed back vigorously so as not to get in his face.

  "You are Monsieur Lassay?" I asked in French.

  "Oui." He shook my hand amicably.

  "You have houses to sell?"

  "Houses for sale? No."

  "No?"

  "Oh, there are lots for sale. It's a good time to buy a house, but I only have one. Mine. You can buy that if you want." He chuckled to himself.

  "But Monsieur Martin, he say you have houses for sale."

  "Monsieur Martin? You know him?"

  "Yes."

  "Yes, of course!"

  I turned round. This last voice had come from some spiral stairs beside the door. A 30-something man, dressed as a dapper country gent in khaki cord trousers, yellow waistcoat and a brown velvet jacket, was smiling broadly and holding his hand out for me to shake.

  "Guillaume Lassay," he said. "This is my father. Hasn't Maman finished the shopping yet?" he asked his dad. Dad garrumphed. Seems he was killing time while his wife went round the market.

  I introduced myself to Guillaume and tried to repeat what Lassay senior had said about it being a good time to buy.

  Lassay the younger got the message and laughed. "There are lots for sale, maybe. But they're not all like you want. They are not all country houses. I have one such house for sale. A cottage. Beautiful, and not expensive. We will go and see it now."

  He leaned across his desk, opened the central drawer and took out a large bunch of keys. He tore off the paper nametag on the key-ring and put the keys in his jacket pocket, ushering me towards the door.

  "We will visit the house, then I will take you to the best restaurant in the region."

  'Oh, but..." Beware of estate agents bearing gifts, I told myself. It'd be like a serial killer offering you the chance to slip on a pair of handcuffs to see tow they feel.

  "Monsieur Martin wants to invite us, to apologize for abandoning you."

  "He comes with us for lunch?"

  "No, but he will pay."

  "Ah, OK, good."

  I let myself be escorted out of the door to a deep-blue Mercedes.

  Driving out of the town, we passed several houses with "À Vendre" signs hanging from their front gates.

  "These people want to leave the town and live in the country. As you do, Monsieur Vest."

  "But already, er, there is country here, now, already, no?" What I meant was, almost all of these town houses had gardens that backed on to open farmland. Compared to Paris, this was virgin rainforest.

  "Ah, but this is the town. Where we are going is the real country."

  We stopped at at least 50 junctions, drove through cold, shady areas of woodland and up and down steep-sided little knolls, and after about 20 minutes we arrived in a half-mile-wide river valley with banks of tall, skeletal trees lining it on either side. I saw farm cottages at about 100-metre intervals along the valley until the river meandered round a bend and cut off the view.

  "Voila."

  I got out of the car and was hit by the deafening silence. You could almost hear the smoke coming out of the chimney of the house two fields away.

  Little birds hopped about everywhere. A crow fluttered its wings in a treetop and I stared up at it as if it had just fired a gun. Monsieur Lassay was right - this was the real country.

  We were parked on a grass bank outside a veritable bijou of a cottage, a square one-storey stone building with a mossy tiled roof and pale-yellow window frames. It was surrounded by tufty lawns and bare fruit trees. Beside the house there was a large barn that had been converted into a garage and outhouse, with new double doors and a skylight in the old wood-slatted roof.

  "You also have the fields as far as the trees," Monsieur Lassay said as if I'd already bought the place. He pointed up beyond the fruit trees to two sloping pastures, one of which had a tractor in it, the other sheep. The house seemed to come with its own hobby farm.

  Lassay took out his keys and let me in. The interior had been very tastefully modernized. In the lounge there was a huge stone fireplace, almost as high as the house itself, and exposed beams threatened to knock your head off at every turn, but there was also a swish new fitted kitchen, modern bathroom, flush toilet and mighty-looking electric boiler. The lounge and two bedrooms were furnished with the basics - tasteful modern reproductions of rustic furniture.

  "Everything is included in the price," Monsieur Lassay told me, his first words since we'd come inside. No hard sell, he was just letting me appreciate how incredibly cheap this was. It was already a fully functional holiday home, but was selling at the price you'd expect to pay for a roofless ruin.

  "Why it is very, er, not expensive?" I asked. A stupid question if you want to buy something, but it needed asking.

  Monsieur Lassay shrugged, not in an annoying Parisian way, but just to express his ignorance.

  "That is the price here. It is a long way from Paris."

  We went out to the barn, which was now 50% modern garage space and 50% primeval agricultural building. The garage half had a concrete floor and a little lock-up area, for bikes I guessed. The primeval half still had an earth floor and crumbling walls. It smelled of petrol and dry timber.

  "Bonjour."

  There was a small figure in a flat cap standing in the doorway of my barn. A trespasser, already?

  "Bonjour." Monsieur Lassay apparently knew him, and went to shake his hand. It was a farmer, about 60 years old, a semi-midget with enormous h
ands and bright red cheeks.

  They began talking about me in the local patois, a mixture of French and ancient Egyptian that I didn't quite catch.

  Monsieur Lassay seemed to be confirming that I might buy the place. The farmer's expression suggested that he was surprised. Didn't I look the country gent type?, I wondered. No, not really. Looking down, I noticed that my trainers were already caked in a kind of showshoe of mud. The country, I realized, is even dirtier than a Parisian sidewalk, and my feet were a picture of impracticality.

  The two men talked on, with the farmer waving his arm rather threateningly up towards the fields. Not being an expert on French rural life, I wondered if the farmer came with the farm, and I was effectively buying him, too. Would I have to feed him when crops failed? When he got too old to work, would I have to take him to the woods and shoot him?

  Monsieur Lassay made soothing gestures, and the farmer went away, not back to the road, but up through my orchard. The nerve of the man. Did he think he owned the place?

  "That is Monsieur Augème. He lives on the next farm. He uses these fields, and wants to be sure that the buyer will continue to let him use them."

  "It depends, er, how, er, why, er, what," I said. I tried to think of the French for "no satanic rituals or dungheaps outside the kitchen, please".

  "He pays to cultivate one field and put his sheep on the other."

  "He pays?"

  "Yes, a symbolic sum." I was even going to get an income from the place? And, I thought, if the old guy starts ploughing at six in the morning, at least I, as the landlord, can make him shut up, unlike the Madame living upstairs in the HLM.